


Strike

by lonerofthepack



Series: Taken 'verse [12]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Attempted Murder, Banter?, Biting, Chronic Pain, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Escape Attempt, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury, Kidnapping, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Torture, Whumptober 2020, several attempts at murder come to think of it, threat of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27446242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: Written for the 2020 whumptober prompt: I Don’t Feel So Well: Chronic Pain | Hypothermia | Infection"What will it take, my dear Director, to keep you where I put you.""Wasn't my idea," is what he says, sounding like gargled glass and roofing nails. Words are very hard in his mouth, the edges of them scrape. They're hard to think of, as well — he's tired, and he thinks his body might be confused between fever and freezing to death. "Would've stolen shoes."Part of the Taken ‘verse, set after Flight
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Series: Taken 'verse [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Strike

**Author's Note:**

> I Don’t Feel So Well: Chronic Pain | Hypothermia | Infection
> 
> They’re so weird, by which I mean Gellert’s a creep and Percival is suicidally reckless and the Minions have Made A Poor Choice (Again).
> 
> If I’ve missed any tags, please let me know.

  
He's cold. Half a shirt and no shoes will do that, especially half-way up a mountain and laying on rocks.

He's hazy, too — doesn't understand the light as danger until he's being yanked up by magic that hates him, dragged back up the rock face with no particular care.

The minion snarls something — Percival's German is poor, but even fever-hazy and probably concussed, it isn't hard to interpret threats.

Especially not when he's drowning under a fear-fueled Cruciatus a moment later.

But when the screaming starts, it's much too loud to be his, and his muscles have gone to water. Empty-headed with pain, he can see the pristine sky, speckled with bright stars. No light pollution, not like New York; he doesn't need the flashes of spellwork to understand the clearing. There are pine needles under his fingers and poking him where there's no shirt to protect his skin. He should be cold.

He had been cold. It had hurt-- shivering had made the arm jangle. Now he's not so cold, or at least the shivers have stopped, and that's… well, nothing's nice really, and there's a part of him that knows to be worried, that knows shivering for all its hurt had been saving him, but it doesn't hurt quite so much. 

"What will it take, my dear Director, to keep you where I put you."

He'd known that Grindelwald had come— no one else made his minions scream, and certainly no one else made them _stop_ screaming — and the cloying aura of Dark power presented itself like a brick to the head at twenty paces; he was rather unmistakable. 

_Light pollution_ , Percival thought again, and bared teeth that tasted like blood at the perfect sky. 

"Wasn't my idea," is what he says, sounding like gargled glass and roofing nails. Words are very hard in his mouth, the edges of them scrape. They're hard to think of, as well — he's tired, and he thinks his body might be confused between fever and freezing to death. "Would've stolen shoes."

"Is that so? How strangely forthright of you."

"'S the fever. I think. 'Dj you kill him?"

"Naturally. I left specific instructions and here you are, half dead."

"Hate it when you kill them. 'S fuckin' stupid— waste."

"I know. Hardly a waste, my dear -- after all, I haven't any use for someone who doesn't understand the lay of the board. And you do hate it, which seems so strange to me. You'll have to explain."

He shouts— well, no, he whimpers, as enthusiastically as he can manage when that evil fucking wand drags down the length of his foot, scant relief following under the electric pain. It's not a healing wand, or Grindelwald isn't a healing wizard, and it always feels like being stitched closed with lightning, leaving scars just under the skin still aching.

"Tell me," Grindelwald demands, and he babbles between whimpers, somewhere on the crumbling edge of consciousness.

Something about the stars. It might have been an extended metaphor that circled back around to the wastefulness of murder, but he suspects, when the tears slow their dribble down his temples, that it was rather less poetic and rather more in the nature of stumbling over name, rank, unit, until there were no other words left.

"Try again," Grindelwald tells him, cold and amused, and pulls the branch out of his leg.

He's screaming even before he lurches half up, and then the sound is just a little thinner, a bit keener, as it cuts through the dark, as his shoulder reminds him he's a fool in a dozen different ways.

He goes hazy again, and rouses spluttering with the slap of a freezing aguamenti against his cheeks.

"So rude, Percival, drifting off. You were explaining your views on employee loyalty and managing morale."

His leg is on fire — experience tells him it was likely to continue to burn unabated for at least three more days, and ache after that. Grindelwald has him by the shoulder — if he had the coordination, he'd fight that grip, because fixing a dislocation with brute force hurt far more than it had to and he was going to pass out if it hurt even a little bit more.

"H-hh— you haven't. Haven't got. Employees. 'Ss different — no benefits."

"You don't think so? Is the promise of change and future riches of no benefit to morale? To claim one's rightful spot is of no value?"

"R-religion doesn't put— ah, fuck, _ahhhn_."

"Religion," Grindelwald says, in that tone that's somewhere between cruciatus until his vocal cords rip for the insolence and a smug, painfully playful rape for being a, in Grindelwald's terms, 'delightful diversion'. "Darling man, such praise."

"Y'r a bullshit artist, Gellert," he gasps, and decides that he deserves his pettiness if he's going to be punished for all this anyway. "A conman. You're pedalling slavery and death as utopia, and you get angry when your thugs enjoy their jobs a little too much."

"Is that so?" Grindelwald’s trying for urbane, and hitting icy instead — there's going to be no escaping punishment, but Percival takes the point anyway, etches it deep in the mental blackboard he carries his hatred on.

"That's so," he agrees, and braces himself to shortly scream himself voiceless.

"Quite the analysis, Director; you've missed a point, though."

"Do tell," he grits, and only shouts a bit through his teeth as Grindelwald forces his shoulder back in place, jarring the broken collarbone.

He doesn’t pass out, but the stars overhead spin dizzily enough that he wishes he had.

"I only become angry when they touch my things for their sport. You are mine, and they are not permitted to touch you without permission."

The laugh rattling out of his throat startles him, and only makes everything hurt more, feral and bloody. He forces himself to loosen his hands out of their death-grips. "If the only wages you're paying are the opportunity for cruelty, you're hiring your own executioners. And you'll be cheating them too."

A hand in his hair — gods and goddesses, he _hates_ this man touching his hair — dragging his head back to bare his throat to leave a claiming mark, biting him hard enough to break skin, the vicious fucker.

"Well-fed wolves have no business in the sheep-fold, my darling little sheepdog. But tell me about this wage theft, I'm _terribly_ eager to hear how you imagine this will work out."

He smiles at the cold dark sky, eyes closed to the perfect stars, and waits for Grindelwald's teeth to press into flesh again.

"Because," he pants, fuck, being bitten _hurts_ , and jerks, as hard as he can with a branch stil wet with his own blood. Feels it catch, just below the ribs, feels Grindelwald's spasm: pain, surprise, too fast for fury yet; and puts all his strength into driving it as deep as he can. "I'm going to kill you myself."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading


End file.
